<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Same End by Opacifica</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942851">The Same End</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opacifica/pseuds/Opacifica'>Opacifica</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tailspinning Into the Epilogues with Dirk and Jake [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Breakup Adjacent, But Not Quite Pulling The Trigger, Hope Is Better Than A Broad Spectrum UV Light, Hope Shenanigans, Kitchen Sex, M/M, Makeup Sex, Miscommunication, Miss Communication Himself: Jake English, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Canon, They Cleaned The Countertops With Lysol Afterwards, Trans Characters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:40:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,770</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opacifica/pseuds/Opacifica</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why do we keep fucking doing this? This is obviously fucking you over. It never works. We keep doing this. It keeps happening.”</p><p>“What else is there for me?” you say, very quietly. “In this whole world, Dirk, what else is there?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jake English/Dirk Strider</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tailspinning Into the Epilogues with Dirk and Jake [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>75</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Same End</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYEL8y7KN3c&amp;ab_channel=AliceWalker-Topic">'Naive' by Alice Walker</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So, what the fuck is the deal?” Dirk asks. Unusually straightforward of him, and no immediate reason springs to mind. He’s hunched over his laptop in a way that’s dead certain to have him complaining of shoulder pain by the evening, an unopened package of unsalted saltine crackers resting beside him. It’s a sort of hazy midday, cloudy in the way that has you doubting your eyes every so often as the light slowly shifts through the massive windows of the apartment that perches over your mansion like the nest of some noble bird of prey.</p><p>He’s a little disheveled, but he often is, when he doesn’t have some out-of-the-home engagement that might require him to be seen by someone other than you. The oversized Utena hoodie he’s wearing credibly might be yours; the boxers definitely are. And he’s watching you impassively, not so much as a twitch of an eyebrow to make his meaning explicit.</p><p>You set down the uncorked bottle of rosé you’ve been mulling over, look at your hands, at him, back at the bottle, and then back at him. Alright, so you were planning to drink out of it like an animal, but there’s no sense in wasting good dishes and just-as-good dishwasher space when you’re the only one in the household that drinks at all. It’s not double-dipping, for instance, when it’s <em>your</em> bowl of salsa and you don’t intend to share. It’s just plain dipping.</p><p>“I am… thirsty?” you say, then chuckle. “Heh, tricky words, there. I didn’t think you’d want a glass, sorry, shall I take one down for you? I don’t mean to be uncouth about it, just a bit of a habit, unrepentant manchild that I am.”</p><p>He sighs.</p><p>“I’m trying to do the ‘not making unflattering assumptions’ thing, dude.”</p><p>“Unflattering!” you scoff. “Come right off it, it’s… what, three in the almost-evening?”</p><p>“Twelve thirty.”</p><p>“Oof. Okay, a little early in the day, but I’m relaxed! And I was going to mix it with some pink lemonade, I’ll have you know. Roxy taught me that one.”</p><p>You leave some of the meaning unsaid. He likes Roxy, first of all, and your choices can’t be that bad if they are Roxy-informed. More importantly, he <em>likes</em> Roxy, and reminding him of this makes any discussion of your innocuous habit far more uncomfortable, since Roxy had a <em>problem</em>, and you emphatically do not, and for him to draw a comparison between the two of you would be an escalation of the discussion akin to tossing napalm on a kitchen fire in several different respects.</p><p>And you <em>are</em> relaxed, thank you very much. You were thinking of perhaps sitting down to do some tweeting, or some mindless forum-browsing, or perhaps Googling yourself, which stresses you out more than just about anything, but, well, hence the rosé. It’s not as though you have anything better to do on a liquid-slow Sunday afternoon, and Dirk has been <em>busy</em> since you woke up this morning, which is an unimaginable drag. At least it’s some sort of passion project that’s got him all coiled up like a spring rather than anything to do with the show, which stresses <em>him</em> out, of late, and makes everything kind of shitty at intervals. He explained the endeavor he’s chipping away at a while back, and you found it reasonably interesting, but nothing you’d be of much help with. Old schematics for the Brobot, old questions about how to house a mind in a body, how much human can be human’d out of metal and plastic and rare earth minerals.</p><p>He doesn’t have a reply to that. You didn’t expect him to. Oh, well. Aware that he is paying attention to you, now, you reluctantly retrieve a glass from the cabinet, just a normal drinking-water-type one, and pour about a fourth of the bottle into it. Dirk makes a point of not having wine glasses in the place, and you’re under strict orders to clear all of your paraphernalia out whenever the lovely Lalondes make the jaunt over from the carapacian kingdom.</p><p>The whole hullabaloo every time Roxy decides they feel like a chat wasn’t so irritating when you were drinking less. You suppose Dirk is probably right to chide you, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.</p><p>It’s cheap wine. Both tastes and smells more like grape juice gone off than anything, which is always a bit of a hazard, because the taste doesn’t reflect the contents, and you can fool yourself into thinking you’re stone cold sober until you really, <em>really</em> aren’t anymore. At which point you’re typically a little too far off the wagon to do much purposeful convincing anyone of anything, including yourself.</p><p>“You know what? Pour me one, too,” he says, abruptly, closing the lid of his laptop with a muted thud.</p><p>You blink at him for a solid second; he’s so obnoxiously imperturbable when he has the shades on, so well-practiced at limiting his emotional expressions to the ones he can hide behind polarized black lenses.</p><p>“How much?” you say, to have something to say.</p><p>“Half a glass, I don’t know, dealer’s choice. Pink lemonade sounds good, I didn’t know we had any.”</p><p>With a second glass half-full, you are now obliged to rummage through the freezer until you find a rather pathetic can of frozen pink lemonade goop, the sort you’re really supposed to mix with a whole pitcher of water, though you rather enjoy eating it like sorbet with a spoon. This habit, at least, you’ve been able to keep on the downlow. You don’t <em>think</em> Dirk would disapprove, but he does have a habit of his own, one that he is self-professedly working on, of rather carelessly pointing out the odd things you do when you think no one is watching, in a way that suggests his noticing is a small victory of insight on his part. Which stings, you’ve said so, you know you’re not 24/7 public-consumption sitcom material, not by a friggin’ long shot. It’s just no fun feeling like the butt of a cosmic joke all the damn time. What even does he or anyone expect of you, behind closed doors?</p><p>For such a damned long time, no one was <em>watching</em>. And it feels like… receiving a failing grade on a report card, getting chastised by some grand all-seeing and all-knowing supervisor for unprofessional conduct, when he just… observes you doing something weird, and mentions it. Like he’s proud of catching you en flagrante délit.</p><p>You know that’s not fair, that it surely does actually matter to Dirk, that he gets to see pieces of you that no one else does, but, well, that’s part of why it feels so bad when the heat of indignation and offense rises to your face, why you usually make yourself swallow it down and laugh along with him. You imagine that he is laughing, at least. It’s hard not to; hard to tell when he actually <em>is</em>, so you usually have to guess, and you supply your guesses, perhaps, a little masochistically.</p><p>Plopping a couple of ice cubes in each of your beverages, you hand one to him and take a long draught from your own.</p><p>“Christ, this is sour as fuck,” he observes. At least now his expression is obvious, his whole face all screwed up.</p><p>“I could mix in a scoop of sugar?” you offer.</p><p>“Nah. The point of alcohol isn’t to enjoy it, is it? Otherwise the shit would taste good.”</p><p>“No, I don’t suppose that is… the point,” you sigh, knocking back your glass for a second time and draining it to the rocks. You’re no good at ‘sipping’. He’s right. The mouthfeel isn’t <em>good</em>, even at its best, and rosé-plus-frozen-lemonade-syrup is one of the most palatable combinations you’ve yet stumbled upon, but still a little too spoiled-grape in aftertaste to be pleasant on the tongue for any longer than necessary.</p><p>He raises his eyebrows above his glasses, and you anticipate a comment, but his visible expression transforms to a grimace, a wrinkled nose, and he tosses back his own beverage as well with only the slightest noise of disgust.</p><p>“Goodness’ sake, Dirk, you ought to pace yourself,” you say, then wince, and add, “one really must work up to this sort of tolerance, y’know,” so as not to be a hypocrite.</p><p>“I want to get it. So, okay, when does it get good? Right now my sinuses feel a little like I’ve been gargling wet grape marc, and I figure that’s not the draw. Unless it is, in which case, I guess it’s an acquired taste.”</p><p>“Hah, yes, that’d be… correct,” you sigh. “Alright, fine, it’s - it’s very hard to explain.”</p><p>“I figure. God, I can feel it in my esophagus, this is horrific.”</p><p>“That’s just the pulp from the lemonade,” you say. “Some people like it, you know.”</p><p>“Sorry, bro, I think this is the part where I cop to not being easily generalized to ‘some people’.”</p><p>“I never expected any less of you,” you tell him, a bit fondly, a bit exasperated with him. “Don’t hold off on your project on my account. This is truly all there is to the drinking thing, every bit the long and short of it. You just drink the sloshy stuff in your cup, and then you resume whatever you were doing previously, or move on to whatever comes next on the agenda, and it is a little more tolerable and sucks significantly less, and if you’re lucky, you’ll forget any miserable parts. Repeat ad infinitum until absolutely anything is fine. Speaking of which, I was thinking about watching something, I’ll keep the volume low and all, that won’t be too much of a distraction, will it?”</p><p>You’d like to stop talking about this. It’s not exactly your idea of a good time, watching his brows tick incrementally higher and higher above his shades every time you tack on another phrase of explication.</p><p>“You never answered my question,” he says. “What the fuck is the deal? I - you seem sad.”</p><p>“Sad,” you scoff.</p><p>“Bored, then,” he amends.</p><p>“Well, that’s even less flattering, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Maybe <em>you</em> could tell <em>me</em> the answer to that neat rhetorical-question dodge? I <em>really</em> don’t want to seem like I don’t trust you to entertain yourself or something dumb as shit like that. But, uh, for the sake of clarification, I’m asking. Just a question.”</p><p>“This is exactly the opposite of what I wanted,” you insist. “You’re all wrapped up in your wheelings and dealings. Or you <em>were</em>, or it sure friggin’ seemed like you were. I didn’t want to <em>bother</em> you, this <em>is</em> entertaining myself, or it was supposed to be, alright? And now you are both distracted and concerned, neither of which I consider remotely desirable outcomes!”</p><p>He does that terrifying, opaque thing where he breathes slowly and steadily and his face turns masklike, top to bottom, before he speaks.</p><p>“I’m worried about the drinking. Tell me I shouldn’t be worried and I’ll shut up.”</p><p>The words don’t spring immediately to your lips, in part because there are simply too many of them to pick just a few when put on the spot, and in part because you catch yourself about to lie to him. Actually lie, not just bowl blithely through the conversation without thinking. An on-purpose lie is much worse than one that can be excused as part of some bit you’re doing. And you’ve abruptly stopped doing any sort of bit.</p><p>You open your mouth, then close it again. Your tongue tastes like lemonade goop and atrociously bad rosé.</p><p>At least he doesn’t interrupt. You set your glass down on the counter.</p><p>“I’d rather you not worry about me,” you finally say. “It’s not a very boyfriendly sentiment, I don’t think. Sort of mucks things up. Has in the past, alright? It’s just a little demeaning is all, I s’pose.”</p><p>He takes the words like a series of backhands, squares his shoulders and stiffens from the clavicles up the way he does when you hit him. Guilt seeps in, like it always does when you say something too honest.</p><p>“I don’t need a caretaker,” you add, since the hole you’re digging is already just about six feet deep, so you might as well be thorough about it. “On account of being a human being of reasonably sound mind and not an animal or a child or somesuch. Unless you disagree on any of those line-items, in which case, I daresay you’ve got no business acting as though you love me the way a person loves another person, I mean, if you don’t fully consider me to be one of those, Dirk.”</p><p>“Bringing out the big guns, huh.”</p><p>“Might as well,” you say, feeling quite tired and rather old and not nearly as relieved by the wine as you’d thought you’d be.</p><p>“Okay,” he says, after a second, and you wish, as you always do, that you could read his face, his inflection, you’d take anything. “I’m going to… go, because otherwise I’m going to say some stupid shit right now.”</p><p>“Well, that’s worse, isn’t it?” you demand. “Alluding to horrible things you think rather than speaking them aloud! Golly fucking gee, go ahead and zip on over to Roxy’s for the evening and swallow them all back down so you can go back to just pretending that you even sort of like me all the damn time when you’ve got <em>stupid shit</em> like this roiling around in your stomach that you’ll never tell me because, what, I’m too irredeemable a dunce to handle the truth, ever?”</p><p>You can feel your tone ticking up and turning more than a little hysterical, oh shipperwicklets. Though you suppose that’s at least a genuine reflection of how you feel right about now.</p><p>Right about now, if he’s smart, which he is, he’s almost certainly cottoning on to the fact that this isn’t an argument he can win by beating a hasty retreat, which is exactly what you’re trying to convey. Because you’ll really fall to pieces if he jets out now, straight-up abandons you to this. Good gracious, you just need an ounce or two of reassurance sometimes, is all, and if it doesn’t come from him, it comes from a bottle, and he’s not forthcoming enough to make reliance on a single-stream source of validation a reasonable proposition.</p><p>He thinks he’s so much better about being upfront about stuff than he actually is. Maybe he thinks accusing you of having some kind of egregious ‘problem’ is an act of easily translatable affection. You’re sure there’s some kind of disconnect, here, and that might be it, that he’s convinced himself, at some point or another, that you’re weird and cagey specifically about the kind of interactions that you actually want.</p><p>You <em>want</em> him to wax poetic about the pleasantness of your company. You <em>want</em> him to repeat, at length, that he finds you attractive and desirable and, hell, just to remind you once in a while that you’re more than an exotic pet that sleeps on his couch and performs on-camera when given the clicker signal he’s trained into you.</p><p>But you swear, he acts like that sort of affection and transparency is some kind of anathema. Like he must offer it sparingly if at all, for fear of overwhelming you.</p><p>When have you <em>ever</em> given him that misconception? Never - never on purpose, at least.</p><p>The problem is that you can’t quite lay it all out on the table, can’t ask him up-front to occasionally say ‘wow, that was fun and good, I enjoy this, and I like you very much’ after you, like, attend some benefit gala and trot around together for an hour or two before you wind up necking in the bathroom. Everything has to be a mind game with him.</p><p>You suppose you’re in good company, there, but you - you <em>try</em> to say it to him, at least, you really try to summon up the words, but it seems like he’s trying in the exact opposite direction, like he <em>has</em> the words but refuses to spit them out because he thinks you’ll turn tail and flee at any sign of sincerity.</p><p>But that’s - that’s just not true! You want it so badly, but you can’t <em>ask</em>, because then it will simply be extracted from him through your perfidious desires rather than freely given, and then the words will turn to ashes in your hands, knowing that he doesn’t mean them, not really, not the way you want.</p><p>“Fucking hell, dude, do you want a fight right now? Is that it?”</p><p>“No, of course not!” you insist. Ha, quite frantic-sounding, now. What a mess of a person you are. You should have let him leave. Should have encouraged him. “Won’t you ever just fucking talk to me, Dirk? Tell me what’s going on in that melon you’ve got balanced between your shoulders, hm?”</p><p>“I’m worried about you.”</p><p>“Don’t - well - stop it!”</p><p>“You’re not assuaging any concern I’ve got going on, here, or encouraging me to open up about my rich inner life, in case you were wondering.”</p><p>“I’m <em>always</em> wondering. I’m always friggin’ wondering. But you know that, right? Better that I be lost and perplexed as to your intentions than <em>bored</em>, heaven forbid, lest I take to the streets and skitter off into someone else’s arms like an underenriched sheepdog in pursuit of a shiny new owner and better toys. Because that’s what you think of me.”</p><p>“You want a fight.”</p><p>“Don’t <em>tell me what I want</em>!”</p><p>“Don’t tell me what I think of you.”</p><p>“If you would ever tell me. If you would ever just <em>tell me</em> of your own volition. I wouldn’t have to guess,” you say.</p><p>“Fuckin’ same, dude. Maybe give me something to work with, occasionally. Answer a question, ever. It’s not fucking fun having to put on my deerstalker and whip out a comedically large magnifying glass every time you start acting finicky, I ain’t about the detective schtick. That’s Jane’s thing. Not mine.”</p><p>“Well, that’s low,” you tell him.</p><p>“Are we not hitting low? Kind of seemed like we were hitting low, dude.”</p><p>“I - alright. Alright,” you sigh. “You’re right, of course. You’re always right. I’m sorry for bringing any of it up. You’re right, I have a terrible insidious brainproblem that makes me drink, and I should stop, and I am shitty for not stopping. There, are you satisfied?”</p><p>He doesn’t look quite surprised. He never looks quite surprised, with the shades on, or in general, when you cop to something horrible. You’ve done so often enough, you think. You’ve told him enough horrible true immensely humiliating things to fill a five-hundred-page bestselling exposé. He could ruin you, and he must know that.</p><p>“You’re not,” he says haltingly. “Shitty. For having a fucking problem. D’you think I could look Roxy in the eyes if I legitimately thought addiction made a person <em>shitty</em>? Rose? I’d have to be some kind of monster, Jake. I’m sorry if I somehow made you believe that’s… what I’m like.”</p><p>“You don’t make me believe anything,” you say quietly.</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Don’t apologize to me when you haven’t done anything wrong. It just makes me feel like the worst kind of - just the most miserable, lumbering, downright sociopathic… I should be sorry. I’m sorry. I really am. I always make it worse.”</p><p>It’s not that things have been <em>bad</em> between you of late. You just get horribly worn down, you suppose, when it’s all beating-each-other-to-a-pulp, when so much of what your relationship seems to be is just facilitating that particular spectacle. It’s a slow-acting poison. Things become more and more about the roles you hop into the ring and act out with your weapons and your fists three times a week, and less about anything else.</p><p>You’re not sensitive, you’re not some kind of delicate flower in need of cosseting and attention and unending headpats and affirmation, you <em>like</em> the other stuff, even, you like being part of a story with him. But it starts to eat away with you, like even a slow-moving river eats through soft rock, when that’s all it is. When the closest he’s come to verbal affection-without-affectation in quite some time is, essentially, demanding you accede to the word ‘alcoholic’.</p><p>Performing for him is nice, and all, but couldn’t he pretend to like you a little, sometimes? Say it out loud? He’s busy, and he likes being busy, but couldn’t he… couldn’t he just…</p><p>You sigh. At least the wine has warmed you up a bit. And it’s most certainly been acting on you for longer than that. You can’t hardly think any of this stuff, let alone say it, when you’re stone cold sober.</p><p>Even as you’ve been thinking these things, he still looks rather bowled over, though you can only pick up on that as a function of having on-again off-again lived with him for a few years, now. There’s the telltale steadying hand on the counter, the slightest intimation of tension between his brows, the minimal downward cant of his face, because he’s not even trying to look you in the eye from behind those sunglasses.</p><p>“That shit,” he says, after a second, gesturing vaguely at the cubes of ice remaining in the bottom of his empty glass, “is stronger than it tastes.”</p><p>“Fortified Zinfandel rosé will sneak up on you that way,” you say. “Are you - are you alright?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>He shifts his weight, like he’s experimenting with his internal gyroscope, then shakes his head.</p><p>“I’ve probably said some stupid shit, though. I don’t - this is why I don’t…”</p><p>“Nothing stupid, Dirk. I don’t think you’re capable of saying anything legitimately stupid,” you tell him.</p><p>“Fucking flatterer.”</p><p>“Sure,” you concede, deflating a little. “Perhaps.”</p><p>“You never say you love me anymore,” he says.</p><p>“Neither do you,” you retort, though without any real venom at all. You’re pretty sure he stopped first. Like it was something he was reminding himself to do, like clockwork, and he forgot to reset the alarm some time after the third or fourth breakup. And you look like a deluded, mooning idiot, saying it when he doesn’t. Solicitous, like you’re trying to extract it from him, so you just… you don’t, unless he’s doing it.</p><p>You used to. But he also used to, and when he was doing it regularly, it was <em>fair</em>.</p><p>“We’re not going to fucking… break up like this, are we?”</p><p>“How does it usually go, again?” you ask, feeling every bit as tired and defeated as he sounds. “You can call me a slut if you like, or just allude to it, if that’ll make it feel more normal.” </p><p>Since you’re already punching low, might as well keep it up. Might as well say the things you want to say.</p><p>“You’re not… I don’t think that.”</p><p>“Alright, then I’m fresh out of ideas,” you say.</p><p>“This is stupid.”</p><p>“Don’t I know it.”</p><p>“Why do we keep fucking doing this? This is obviously fucking you over. It never works. We keep <em>doing this</em>. It keeps happening.”</p><p>“What else is there for me?” you say, very quietly. “In this whole world, Dirk, what else is there?”</p><p>That seems to stymy him, at least for a moment, and you seize that moment with both hands, take both of your glasses, turn away, and dump the ice and icemelt into the sink, stick them in the dishwasher, so you don’t have to think about how this got started anymore.</p><p>It’s different every time. He’s jealous over someone you partner up with professionally. Or else he gets peevish because <em>you’re</em> busy with some non-Dirk project. Either way, he never quite shows it or talks about it normal-wise, but he throws himself into his own work to avoid tipping his hand in your direction, retreats into himself, stops talking to you to avoid talking about the things that upset him, and it spirals out of control in an interminable feedback loop until someone lights a match and someone else pulls the plug.</p><p>But this time you don’t think you’ve done anything to prompt it. You’ve been working awfully hard, keeping yourself on the straight-and-narrow, even though that sometimes requires a little nip of the pink-and-fruity stuff here and there to keep yourself in line, make things easier and less complicated.</p><p>You never quite know what to do without him. Why else would you always end up here, when there’s hardly a soul in the world who wouldn’t gladly buy what you’re selling?</p><p>The calculus of being with Dirk, and unavailable to everyone else, only works if he actually likes you. If he takes unique joy in your company that… that any number of someone-elses couldn’t. If all he really likes about you is fucking you and the ridiculous bullshit you do on cue for the cameras, then he’s no different than anyone else on this friggin’ planet, and it doesn’t work, numerically, anymore, your justification for this. You can’t deny the utilitarian argument, no longer have a good, defensible reason to say ‘no’ to anyone who wants you.</p><p>You could cry. Really, you could. It might kill you, going back to how it was, but you’ll have to, really you will, if he’s serious about all this.</p><p>There is so little worth liking about you, worth trading in to earn the space you take, the path you trod to get here to this new world. Just the flesh and the body of you, really. Sometimes you think he sees just a little more, something extra, something worth loving, even. But you’re fairly sure, at this point, that he’s just remembering something you used to be, before, and aren’t anymore.</p><p>He’s rounded the kitchen island to join you by the dishwasher by the time these thoughts have taken hold, and you’re almost startled when you stand and he’s just sort of there. For all he teetotals, you’re fairly sure that Dirk could down a vineyard without sacrificing an ounce of his grace, economy of movement, and vocabulary.</p><p>“You don’t get it,” he says, his tone almost bitter. “How much you have. How much you are. You just fucking throw it away.”</p><p>And that, for a split second, makes you angry, really, truly <em>angry</em> - how dare he, what does he know about any of that? What the fuck does he know about you, if he’s capable of believing that, <em>saying</em> it, for fuck’s sake?</p><p>“I think I understand all too well,” you say, carefully measuring the timbre of your own retort.</p><p>“If that was true, you wouldn’t -”</p><p>“Wouldn’t what?” you interrupt. “Wouldn’t drink?”</p><p>“That’s not what I -”</p><p>“Isn’t it, though? Isn’t that what this boils down to, every time? If I weren’t such a failed whatever-the-fuck-I-am, I’d be exactly what you envision, right? But I’m not! I’m not.”</p><p>It feels a little like dashing through the halls of your mansion, slamming every door you pass. That’s how choices always feel. A door open or a door closed. You’re boxing yourself in, now, and you can’t seem to stop. You’ll regret it later, as you always do, but when you inevitably turn with the vague hope of retracing your steps, you’ve somehow locked the last door behind you, from the other side.</p><p>More like watching a movie than anything, you can see it, like you’re hovering four feet overhead, watching yourself tear it all to pieces.</p><p>“You’re not - there’s no universe where you’re a fucking failure, Jake.”</p><p>Too little, too late. Because you know he’s lying, or else simply too blind to see the truth.</p><p>“I don’t show it well enough, right? That’s got to be the disconnect, here. I just. I thought - I thought that freaked you out.”</p><p>It hurts just as much when he gets it as it does when he doesn’t.</p><p>“It’s complicated,” you say, finally calming yourself down a tic. “It’s really… complicated, I’m sorry. And it’s not at all fair to you, I don’t think. How complicated it is.”</p><p>“I like complicated.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“There’s no one else for me, either. I try really fuckin’ hard not to let that make me act insane, even though I obviously fuck it up about every twenty seconds. You’re so important to me. You’re fucking everything to me, I just wish I could convey that in a way that’d… work.”</p><p>“Why?” you ask softly. Because you know all too well why he’s everything to you, and you’re sure he knows it, too. He’s saved you, over and over again, from no one less frequently or egregiously than your own slipshod ramshackle deathtrap of a self. He likes things about you that are drawbacks or just neutral to everyone else. He knows you, and he still sometimes likes you.</p><p>Just… not lately, it’s seemed. You have so little object permanence for these sorts of things. Anything can vanish when it goes out of sight for a few hours. Anyone can lie and make you feel like you might be safe and loved forever and then die alone in the dark the next evening, or else sink their teeth into you and devour you alive. Nothing lasts forever, you know that better than anyone. People you love can turn around and gut you, take everything away from you, hurt you in ways that never really heal, just scab and itch forever, no matter how much you try to love and will and Hope the wound away.</p><p>Not him. Not usually. But all of your love is tinged in some way with the fear of what it could do to you, what anyone could do to you at any time, and you’d be helpless, and you’d let them, and you’d never say a word in your own defense. Dirk protects you from that part of yourself.</p><p>Usually. Sometimes.</p><p>You just don’t always see what he really gets out of the whole arrangement other than a whole lot of headaches and otherwise, really, what anyone else in the world would get out of the situation. Your skillset is rather limited, after all. And if you’re benefiting and he isn’t, on a complex, metaphysical level, then all that’s holding this together is selfishness on your part.</p><p>And all of this adds up to: you’re pretty good, still, for all the dings the last few years have put in your chassis, at believing people when they tell you things. As long as they tell you things. If he’d just say something good, every so often. You don’t need him to wake up every morning and tell you he treasures you, but actually, that would probably help a lot.</p><p>Just in theory. In practice, you think he’s right about you getting weird about compliments. It’s so much to ask of someone, that they strike a secretive, opaque balance that only you can really expound on, and even then, even you can’t really say you understand.</p><p>Better not to ask. Disappointment is as much a poison to Dirk as anything.</p><p>“Fuck, bro,” he says, in response to your traitorous question. “Put me on the spot, why don’t you.”</p><p>That’s the wrong answer. Your heart sinks.</p><p>“You’re serious,” he continues, after a second. “Fucking hell, am I really that bad at… saying it? God, Jake, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I spent the first decade and a half of my life dreaming about - not even really daring to dream that we’d ever - you’d ever… you’re the only guy I’ve ever loved. You’re my entire concept of love. You’re just so fucking smart, I know you are, and I don’t know why that scares you so much, I’d give anything to see the inside of your head. God, and it’s so fucking selfish, but I think I can help you. With you, I’m a version of myself worth being, I’m trying, you make me want to <em>try</em>, you try so hard and I’d kill for an ounce of whatever it is that makes you believe things can get better. I’m so fucking lost without you. I don’t know who I am without you.”</p><p>Better.</p><p>You regard him almost warily for a moment.</p><p>“And you think I’m handsome,” you say. It’s not a trap. You want him to bring this home.</p><p>For a second, you think he might laugh.</p><p>“Is jumping your bones every chance I get not compelling evidence of my sentiments, there?”</p><p>“No,” you say quietly. “It really isn’t.”</p><p>A crease appears between his eyebrows. Bleached, but so close to him, at your height, you can see his roots starting to grow in black. He reaches up with a work-weathered palm to cup the side of your face. His touch is warm and dry and you don’t shy away from it. His thumb traces over the contour of your cheekbone, and you let the touch be reassuring. You permit it to feel good.</p><p>“I couldn’t come up with a face prettier than yours if I sketched for the rest of my immortal life, dumbass,” he says.</p><p>Fuck it. It’s enough. You’ll take it. You’ll take anything he can give you.</p><p>He’s already close enough that you can easily reach around him and scoop him up, crushing him to your chest, kissing him unhesitatingly, banishing any shadow of a doubt and blotting out any further exchange of words with your body and your lips. His hand, still caressing your face as he reciprocates the kiss, falls to drape around your neck. He pulls you impossibly closer, kisses you impossibly deeper, a desperate, airless kind of thing.</p><p>You consider the distance between the kitchen and the bedroom; untenable. You want him now, immediately, thirty minutes ago, all of this cleared up and put behind you, no one leaving anyone, ever, ever ever ever, you-always-his and him-always-yours. When he pauses to gasp for air, you haul him back by the scruff of his-slash-your hoodie and heft him onto the countertop beside the fridge. Whether intentionally or simply through the kismet of interior design, this positions him at perfect height for more kissing, now with hands free, and you gladly oblige.</p><p>His head knocks back against the cabinets as you dive back into it, shoving one hand up the front of his hoodie to fondle at his chest, the other snaked around to grasp him by the curve of his ass, for greater ease of steering. His fingers twine in your hair, and his nails dig into the meat of your shoulder, though he doesn’t aim to draw blood even as your teeth click together and you tug needily at his lip.</p><p>You learned an awful long time ago about the kinds of affirmations of love and whatnot that Dirk likes. There are some things about him that are immensely complex, and some that, in contrast, are almost implausibly simple.</p><p>With his legs forced open to either side of your body, you manhandle him until you’re pressed flush together, rutting up against the thin fabric of his-slash-your boxer shorts, the heat of him beneath it. If you’d ended things now, you’d probably never have gotten either of these items of clothing back. It’s a funny thought, is all. You mouth at his jaw and immerse yourself in the moment, the slow-pooling heat in your stomach that grows heavier each time he grinds up against you just right, drags the fabric of your silly athletic shorts over your dick with a well-timed roll of his hips.</p><p>If there’s anything to be said for you and Dirk, it’s that by this point in your lives together, you know how to make each other feel good. He shudders deliciously and makes embarrassing little noises into your mouth as you stroke his breast, thumbing ticklishly at his nipple, the whole while digging your fingertips into his hipbone and the meat of his ass hard enough to bruise, <em>holding</em> him the way he likes, so that it aches in a pleasant sort of way.</p><p>He’s no slouch either, once he gets his bearings in his present position, reaching between the two of you with an arch of his back and a last fevered upstroke of his hips to get his hand around the head of your cock, painfully hard within the constraints of your shorts. You can feel him smile against your lips, just a little, as he begins to toy with you, slow and deliberate but always so very good.</p><p>You suck a bruise into the dark skin of his neck, black-purple on brown, to avoid making an ungentlemanly sound or two of your own. He always notices, same as you, and the slow, teasing circles of his thumbtip against your frenulum don’t let up for a second, even as you worry at the bruise with your tongue and he tenses into the sensation with a full-body shudder.</p><p>“Good boy,” you murmur, between each bruise, each little hurt. “Pretty thing. My doughty lad. So good. So brave. My darling.”</p><p>His hips are squirming almost frantically by the time you’re done with his neck. You’re assiduously careful to avoid the snarl of black scar tissue he wears like a circlet as you work him over, but you kiss him, sweet and chaste and close-mouthed, right on where the thick line of tissue stretches over the swell of his throat before you lift your head.</p><p>You make a picture in your mind, the hoodie and the now-dampened boxers, the neat triangles of his shades, all of them in a tidy little pile on the couch, and with the mildest burst of energy you can muster up, white and fuzzy and smelling slightly of ozone, his body is bare beneath you.</p><p>Gooseflesh passes over his skin where he’s been abruptly Hope-divested of his clothing, and his gaze, visible now, flickers up to your face and down to himself.</p><p>You’ve left all of yours on, and that’s on purpose, just for the effect of it. Now, you relinquish his chest and reach down to gently but firmly take his hand off your dick, which is looking rather prominent beneath your shorts. He accedes readily as you take him in your arms, and with a murmured ‘ally-oop’, flip him on his stomach, bent over the countertop. You hold him, without any intent to hurt him, but with a clear command that he not try to lift up, with your fingers twined in the soft, curly hair at the base of his skull.</p><p>His body is more natural to you than yours, at this point. You apply a little more pressure to the back of his neck, pressing his face into the cool granite surface of the countertop, and he exhales rapturously, the stark shapes of his muscles twisting and flexing over his scapulas, each little reaction depicted in sharp relief by the lines of his back.</p><p>He makes a noise that suggests he might be inclined to beg for something, as you gently stroke the curve of his ass with your free hand, and you press his face down harder in repudiation. You will not be taking constructive criticism at this time. He gets the message quickly and shuts up, save for irregular whines as you caress the insides of his thighs, not quite where he wants you just yet.</p><p>Feather-light, you trace your way over the seam where his legs meet his pelvis, the dense muscle of his abdomen, the curves of his iliac crests, each in turn. You know his bones. All the way down to the hard, wet swell of his cock, you know him like a nun knows her rosaries, like a butcher knows the soft, yielding places in a fresh carcass.</p><p>Dirk is specific about this sort of stuff, you’ve learned - slowly, because his preferences trickle through only as they come up, he’d never make it easy for you on purpose. He likes to be fucked in whatever orifice you’re inclined to make use of, though he’s finicky about penetration with any other sort of appendage in the up-fronty region. Back door, anything goes. This took literal months to extract from him, but fortunately, you’re a quick study.</p><p>“Get on with it,” he complains, then groans as you shove his face into the counter and deliver a sharp smack to his ass in recompense. You have a sneaking suspicion that he was specifically courting this outcome; he’s practically throbbing when you return your fingertips to his dick.</p><p>Not to brag or anything, but you could get him off like this all day. Bolstering him by the pubic bone, you curl your fingers down in such a way that you’re effectively gripping him, which lets you take advantage of the naturally occurring lubrication going on as well as the hood of slick skin that moves easily over the centimeter or two of length that T has helped him develop.</p><p>You like his dick. It fits perfectly in your mouth. But for now, you focus on steady, gentle strokes, working him over with the pads of your first two fingers in time with his frantic heartbeats. He can’t even slightly restrain his shuddery reactions, the sounds of agonized need brewing in his chest, drawn out of his body by your careful ministrations.</p><p>Denying him isn’t quite your intention, but he groans like you’ve hit him again when you release your grip, feeling him getting too close to his peak, his twitchy thrusts into your hand gone arrhythmic and quicker than your strokes.</p><p>But you’re just about ready to tear open your shorts, so there’ll be no more stalling, now. He’s already so wet that your hands are slick with it. You ache for him, like you always do, but far more literally.</p><p>You release your grip on his hair, much to his wordless protestations, as you tug yourself free of your shorts, only to settle in with a hand on his hip, the other returned to his dick as you line yourself up with him.</p><p>“Be good for me, lovely,” you tell him, tracing your fingertips over the bruises that mottle his hip.</p><p>Without any further preamble, you thrust into him. He’s so deliriously ready for it, the poor fellow, that you hardly need any guidance at all. He takes you easily, and you sigh with the relief of it, the warmth of his body and the slide of him around you, the way he bears down involuntarily when you stroke his cock. The low moan of pleasure in his throat. It’s all a heady sort of feeling. He gives himself over to you, like this, the only way he entirely seems to know how to.</p><p>It’s different with him than with anyone else. You’ve rationalized it a whole lot of different ways, over the years, but that’s the long and short of it. He’s different. He’s special.</p><p>He’s still yours, for now. You kept him.</p><p>You tighten your grip on his hip and pick up your pace a tad, fuck him a little harder, and he groans, his arms clenched and folded up underneath his face, bolstering him against your present vector of force, which would otherwise be smashing his head into the tile backsplash beneath the cabinets.</p><p>“Say you’re mine, darling,” you tell him, breathing through it as you fuck him, as pressure builds somewhere below the navel you’ve never had. “You’re mine.”</p><p>“Yours,” he chokes, “yours, yes, <em>fuck</em> -”</p><p>He shudders all at once, much faster, this time, the buildup hitting him like a rubber band snapping. He jerks, thrusting back onto your cock and forwards onto your hands, every muscle in his body gone taut. You let him set the pace until he’s done, give him a moment, release his dick and get your hand around his shoulder to really anchor yourself.</p><p>“Ready, dear heart? Can you just -”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>,” he breathes. “Fuck me.”</p><p>And that’s good enough for you in this or any universe. You lift his body, maneuvering him just as much as you’re thrusting into him, fucking him and using him and wringing all the pleasure you can out of his body. The sounds he makes are subdued, a little pained, but no less rapturous, something like a litany of ‘yes’s on every breath.</p><p>You don’t lay him down on the counter once you’re done. Instead, you lift him into your arms, wriggle your shorts back on, and carry him to the bedroom, floating more than walking, since your legs have gone rather gelatinous. He’s quiet, his face on your shoulder, his arms draped around your neck all over again.</p><p>“D’you desperately want the full shower experience, or may I..?” you offer softly, once you’ve lain him down on the untidy tangle of bedsheets.</p><p>“Hope me clean, go for it. Feels weird as shit,” he grumbles, scooching up to his side of the bed of his own volition. How close you just came to never sleeping here again. Remarkable.</p><p>You give yourself a moment to foment the picture, the scene, to want it more than anything. You and he, warm and dry and clean and cosy beneath the covers. It surges in you along with the white light, and there you are.</p><p>“Kind of like… pop rocks,” he notes. “Lightning storm flavored pop rocks. Everywhere.”</p><p>“Mmm,” you agree, pulling him close, resting your face against the smattering of bruises that decorates his neck, where you can breathe him in, just him, and a little Hope still lingering in the soft vellus hairs of his throat. You kiss him normal-ways, just your lips to his jaw. He nudges a little closer to you.</p><p>“I don’t…” he says quietly. “I don’t want to ruin it. But we’re going to have to talk about the drinking thing eventually, Jake.”</p><p>You pretend to be too nappishly dozed-off to hear him, and because you want him to, he believes it, at least a little. Enough. The midafternoon sun streams over the both of you. He sighs and kisses the hand you’ve got draped around his shoulders, cradling him close.</p><p>It worked out this time. Well enough, at the very least.</p><p>The next time, it doesn’t.</p><p>For now, though, you snatch a lazy afternoon wink or two with the only man you know how to love nestled in your arms, breathing steadily. The door is left open. The windows, too. Your clothes remain shared-custody along with his shades, even fallen to the floor as they have with your rolling into bed.</p><p>You’re not a man of small dreams, but this is the best outcome you could’ve hoped for.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>